Five Cuban spies appeal long sentences

CATHERINE WILSONAssociated Press Writer

Published Sunday, March 07, 2004

MIAMI -- Celebrated as heroes in their homeland, five imprisoned Cuban spies have their own Web sites, CD and logo. One wrote a book of jailhouse poetry. Another is represented by a lawyer who defended the radicals who disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The intelligence agents, who claim they were working against U.S.-based terrorists long before Sept. 11, 2001, sit in widely scattered U.S. prisons serving sentences of 15 years to life while attorneys prepare for their appeal Wednesday.

The Havana-trained agents are challenging their convictions, sentences and even the location of the trial in Miami, the largest Cuban community outside Havana. Even though no one of Cuban descent was on the jury, residents live in a community where sentiment against Fidel Castro is strident.

Attorney Leonard Weinglass, who represented convicted agent Antonio Guerrero, called the verdict in Miami "entirely predictable," blaming the outcome on community prejudice and hostility about hot-button exile issues. Weinglass has experience with cause celebre: more than 30 years ago he represented the Chicago 7.

The Cuban spies admit they were secret agents, but three sentenced to life for espionage conspiracy say they never sought or obtained U.S. secrets. The judge and jury rejected that argument and found that their goal of targeting nonpublic, unclassified information was enough to support guilty verdicts.

The most wrenching part of the trial re-enacted a Cuban MiG attack that killed four U.S. fliers whose two small planes were shot down in international airspace north of the Cuban coast in 1996.

Ringleader Gerardo Hernandez was sent to prison for life for murder conspiracy in the missile attack. But the defense maintains no evidence linked him to a plot to blow U.S. planes out of the sky outside Cuba.

His attorney Paul McKenna claims the verdict was based on over-the-top patriotic and emotional appeals by prosecutors mentioning Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust and flawed jury instructions.

The defense position that prosecutors "made inflammatory appeals to patriotism" and "played to and exploited community prejudice and committed numerous acts of misconduct is untrue," lead prosecutor Caroline Miller responded in court papers.

All five agents were convicted in June 2001 of serving as unregistered agents of a foreign government. Two spies charged with targeting U.S. military installations from Key West to Tampa insist they dealt only with "open source" intelligence, or openly available information.

The Cuban spies, also dubbed the Wasp Network, shared encrypted computer disks, transmitted radio messages to Cuba and traveled on false passports in a low-budget operation that left them begging their Havana handlers for cash.

A second target was an assortment of militant Cuban exiles suspected of playing roles in a Cuban hotel bombing spree in 1997, who repeatedly flew into Cuban airspace in 1994 and 1995 and who launched covert attacks in Cuba since the 1960s.

In a curious wrinkle in arm's length U.S.-Cuba relations, the spies fed dirt on exiles to the FBI. No charges resulted.

Exile activist Jose Basulto, who survived the missile attack in a third plane and was targeted by the Cuban agents, said the men "got what they deserved even though the trial judge gave them all sorts of opportunities."

Weinglass noted that three of the Cuban spies ended up with the same life sentences as two American spies who actually divulged top secrets: Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. "This is the first espionage case without a single page of classified information," Weinglass said.

The agents' case has attracted international attention after they've spent nearly 51/2 years behind bars, including months at a time in solitary confinement. "Free the Five" committees in nine U.S. cities arranged rallies for their release just before the court hearing.

Calling themselves "Cuban patriots," the agents denounced their trial after sentencing as "blatantly political" and accuse anti-Castro exile extremists of causing thousands of deaths and injuries since Castro took power in 1959.

The spies have the support of former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Argentina's Adolfo Perez Esquivel, 1980 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Author Alice Walker, a longtime supporter of Castro, has denounced the trial as a miscarriage of justice.

Along with creating a Web site and putting out a music CD of Guerrero's poetry set to music, the Cuban government dubbed 2002 the "Year of the Heroic Prisoners of the Empire," the empire being the United States. The spies are regularly featured in government-controlled media. Their letters home are published, and marches have been organized in their honor.

The United States takes a starkly different view. The government has denied U.S. visas to the Cuban wives of Hernandez and fellow agent Rene Gonzalez, who also trained as Cuban agents, so they can visit them in prison.